Free The Reeve's Tale by Margaret Frazer Page A

Frevisse saw was that Gilbey Dunn had a skill for turning money into more money and, covering her interest, asked, “Why didn’t Matthew Woderove use it that way?”
     
    ‘Matthew has only the one cow and no skill at making money enough to have more. He never had the chance, did he?“
     
    But he had had the land and let it waste. Gilbey had seen its possibility and taken it, able to because of what he had not wasted through the years in the way of money and other chances, Frevisse guessed.
     
    ‘For all he’s so clever, though,“ Anne said, nibbling crumbs from one of the cakes as if grudging they tasted so good but unable to help herself, ”I’d keep an eye on Elena and that Tom Hulcote together if I were him.“
     
    Perryn came into sight at that moment, long-striding up the street, his hand raised in greeting and an apology started as he crossed the plank bridge into the yard. Frevisse and Anne stood up and moved to meet him, but the boys were quicker, tumbling up like a rout of puppies from a game they had been scratching in the dust beside the byre, to pelt across the yard with happy shouts and cluster around him, jostling each other to be the first to tell him something while he tousled their hair and told them, “You wait on a moment. I’ll hear it all later. Right now there’s strangers by the alehouse if you want to go and have a stare at them.”
     
    They did, and in a flurry of bare legs and yells they dashed away, leaving Perryn abruptly deserted and sharing a smile warm with affection with his wife as she came toward him. It was a smile full of so many things understood between them past the need of saying that Frevisse understood far more about them both—beginning with how glad they were of each other and how much they loved their sons—than words would have sufficed for.
     
    But Perryn was already saying, “I pray your pardon, my lady. It was something more than I thought it would be. There’s men of the crowner come with questions about a body.”
     
    ‘Here?“ Frevisse asked, unlikely though that was. The village would know of any body before the crowner would, surely.
     
    ‘Nay. Over Wroxton way. Seems there’s been one found near there, with no one knowing who he was. The crowner’s sent these men out on rounds with some of what was found with him in hopes someone can say who he was after all.“
     
    ‘Poor man,“ Anne said.
     
    ‘The trouble is,“ Perryn went on, ”they don’t want to spend long over it, so I’ve had to send to bring everyone in from the fields, and when they’re done, I’ll have to see to them all going out again or they’ll likely stand about talking the rest of the day away.“
     
    ‘And you’d rather I came back tomorrow to finish our business,“ Frevisse said.
     
    ‘If it’d not be too much trouble, my lady.“
     
    ‘None. Or not compared to what you have on your hands now.“ Not that it would not have mattered if it had been too much trouble, because the crowner and his men were charged, as officers of the king, with looking into any uncertain deaths, to find if there was guilt or only happenstance involved, and whether or no the matter should be given over to the county sheriff. Therefore their business had precedence over hers. But then, neither did she mind the excuse it gave her to have done with manor business for today.
     
    While she thanked Anne for her hospitality and beckoned for Sister Thomasine to join her, Perryn left them, returning down the street toward the alehouse, where Frevisse could now see the five horsemen waiting near a widespread oak on the green. A scattering of village folk not out to the fields today for one reason or another were already gathering to them and, grateful she needed have no part in it, she turned with Sister Thomasine to go the other way, back to St. Frideswide’s.
     
    Chapter 5
     
    When, next day, the nuns came out of the church into the cloister walk after the midmorning Office of